Titan has been cancelled.
- Thread starter Vinyard_sl
- Start date
Because he's not actually very good at games, hence why he'd rather sit and chat than play.
Warmuth
Molten Core Raider
- 869
- 493
The real problem is that raiding is fucking gay. I can't fathom why people line up for the same EXACT shit week after week but they do. Why do Warcraft expansions even release with anything but a bunch of hallways with raid targets?
Argarth
On the verandah
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- 1,056
Laughable really, but I'll bite. If WoW had been conceived in this fashion, I would never have been interested enough to spend a single dime on it.
Laura
Lord Nagafen Raider
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I think you missed the point.
Social Interaction in MMOs is progressively declining, if you think raids/grouping is all there is to player-to-player interaction then you're clueless.
There's a lot of potential "Massively" Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games can offer but all what we're getting is somewhere close to D2 Lobby-Games with all the phasing, instancing, and basically single player game experience with quests, linear paths, hand holding...etc.
What we all are asking for is to increase the player-to-play interaction not decrease it with every major release.
Example of Player-to-Player interaction:
1. Game should be inconvenient and cooperation with other players doing several things should decrease such inconvenience. (Like Cleric resurrection, Spirit of Wolf, Corpse Summoning, Tracking, Teleporting in EQ). This encourage player-to-player interaction; if you give players unique abilities that are out-side-of-combat and help make the world easier to other players that would increase the feeling that you belong in a world and the whole "experience" in the game is going to be changed.
2. You can't do #1 without letting your players FREE. No story. No chain-quests/hub-to-hub bullshit. Set them completely FREE. Let them create their own goals and when they do they'll be free to look around and see other players needing help/asking for help. If you're always following 10+ quests; trust me you have no time to stop and say "Hi!" to other players.
3. More sandbox - Less theme park (but not completely sandbox) I always thought there are kind of players who are left behind; the Crafters/Harvesters. Imagine if you have cities run by actual players, crafting, farming, selling, guarding...etc. This kind of non-combat roles if put in a way that make sense mechanically then it would enrich the player-to-player interaction.
4. Forced Grouping by making content almost impossible to be soloed (at least 80% of it) this will create a sense of danger where you can't delve into a dungeon without a friend. This will increase player-to-player interaction. If you're able to solo all the way to max level, you will solo all the way to the max level. Solo does not equal to Player-to-Player interaction.
5. Economy; I can write a book about this. Question; why monsters drop gold/currency? they shouldn't. There shouldn't be infinite amount of "currency"; currency should be looked at and revamped. I have an idea, too lazy to explain it. This will create a feeling you belong to a world where economy is not "Go kill 20 rabbits to get 20 silver off of them" anymore.
This is just to name a few; I don't have the time to elaborate. Such things are hard to explain in a single post I'd write a book explaining how you can make MMORPGs feel like you belong in a world again. I also think a lot of game designers don't know how to do it, unfortunately.
iannis
Musty Nester
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- 17,656
All any of that does is limit the playerbase, which makes those sorts of interactions you crave even less likely. You're trying to draw a very specifictypeof person into a very specificsubsetof interactions. And that's fine, more power to you. But there aren't enough of that type of people, and for the most part even that type of person doesn't -really- want that subset of interactions. In pvp the wolves need the sheep, in masochistic grindfests the eagerneedthe unwilling. The churn in the playerbase is unsustainable in the sort of game you're describing. It didn't work well 15 years ago and it won't work at all today. That's not a theory.
You can still form meaningful relationships in these games. I had a lot of fun in RIFT, and when my guild inevitably crumbled, well, that was that. Good still shines through and bad still smells bad. You can't expect this shit to last forever. It's just not good for you.
Look to Japan and Korea. It was honestly an aberration for America, probably sparked by so many of us playing nintendo games as kids. We're older now and so is the industry. There is a sort of social momentum at work.
But the squints really love that shit.
You can still form meaningful relationships in these games. I had a lot of fun in RIFT, and when my guild inevitably crumbled, well, that was that. Good still shines through and bad still smells bad. You can't expect this shit to last forever. It's just not good for you.
Look to Japan and Korea. It was honestly an aberration for America, probably sparked by so many of us playing nintendo games as kids. We're older now and so is the industry. There is a sort of social momentum at work.
But the squints really love that shit.
Laura
Lord Nagafen Raider
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I don't ask to eliminate ever other type of games.
I just ask to introduce just ONE single game that cater to us. I don't even want you to play this game; heck I want you to hate it and cry about it. But it's best just to ignore it and play the MMO you like; I take it you're having a blast with the current trend in this genre?
When every MMORPG now is just a clone of a game I don't care about; now the situation is being EXACTLY like the one you described. It's drawn to very specific "type" of person and you know what, more power to you.
Oh, and I don't need/want PvP in that kind of game. But a server with PvP option is no problems for those PvP players.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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Who is "us" and why would the industry cater to that group alone?
You're wrong. WoW doesn't draw just one specific type of person to it, it draws most types of people. And that's the issue - part of the reason WoW is what it is, and the reason that other MMOs are what they are, is that they DON'T try to cater to any single type of person. Oh, some of the grognards may make the claim that WoW et al only draw in 'Bnet tards' or RTS players, but that isn't remotely true. Its accessibility allows for the number of players it has had...if it had only drawn a single type of gamer to it, it would never have been as popular. And you can make that case with most MMOs out there today. EVE-O is an exception in that it's less accessible than EQ1 ever was. It is the MMO equivalent of creating a maze out of razor blades and broken glass and then forcing penises to crawl through it to reach the vagina at the exit. Except when a penis manages to get through it, there's no vagina...just more penises, and maybe a few more mazes (datacores! Woohoo!).
WoW's accessibility is a double-edged sword. It opens the door to almost everyone and reduces any entrance barrier to universally acceptable levels, but it also creates a game that has little to no permanence.
So this is where we come to the part of this that has been beaten to death umpteen times: modern MMOs design around accessibility and appeal to more than one type of gamer, while a handful of MMO misanthropes still expect and demand someone to design an MMO for them and them alone. Your expectations and demands are so narrow in regards to design that no studio I can think of would willingly eschew scads of gamers who would inevitably be turned off by your desired gameplay just so that they can cater to you and a few of your fellows.
I'll also say that I don't think anyone ever designed games to cater to such small groups in the past per se; rather, the designs of the day just seemed that way as the genre was in its infancy and that was enough to keep the relatively small playerbase engaged. That's all anyone knew and all that was available. As the genre has evolved so has...well...everything else. EQ1 'now' isn't the same as EQ1 'then', and EQ2 was in many ways the same type of game that WoW was.
In regards to your 5 "Player-to-Player interactions" points, I can answer them all with "EVE". Now, EVE has a fuckton of issues and is worse in some ways than EQ1 was, but I'd like to see a fantasy MMO with some of EVE's design parameters. But then again, what I envision as a "perfect" sandbox fantasy MMO is going to be different from your vision, and different from Dumar and exceptionally different from others as well.
Did Laura just say she wanted players to make a virtual city where some players are "guards"? Like you have the 12am - 4am EST shift? Plus WOW has all of that except the sandbox stuff.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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That's sort of the thing with Laura/etchazz/Dumar when it comes to WoW. If you reference it, it isn't what they want. But they'll name just about every feature from WoW and say it hasn't been done before. This cycle has been going on for literally years.
And yes, the guard thing/merchant thing has come up multiple times in the past. It sounds like the greatest thing in the world as long as you aren't doing it. And literally nobody wants to do that shit.
And the "us" they are mentioning, Erronious, are the mmo hipsters who want all the benefits of modern technology/graphics but the mechanics/design mentality of 1996. Which were primarily the pantheon backers and the 2-3000 people still playing EQ in an emulated fashion. Rough translation, of course.
And yes, the guard thing/merchant thing has come up multiple times in the past. It sounds like the greatest thing in the world as long as you aren't doing it. And literally nobody wants to do that shit.
And the "us" they are mentioning, Erronious, are the mmo hipsters who want all the benefits of modern technology/graphics but the mechanics/design mentality of 1996. Which were primarily the pantheon backers and the 2-3000 people still playing EQ in an emulated fashion. Rough translation, of course.
MMos are dead, but I still wish they would make an Everquest type game again, and just cap the servers really low so each server has a community.
Unfortunately, that will never happen.
If eq launched today people would whine so much it would go under within a month.
Unfortunately, that will never happen.
If eq launched today people would whine so much it would go under within a month.
iannis
Musty Nester
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If they made an EVE where combat wasn't about as exciting and interactive as reading an exel spreadsheet, I'd probably play it. I never found it to be tactical, it was more like homework on the weekend.
Fantasy skin or Sci-fi skin. I don't really care if i kill orcs or orks.
Fantasy skin or Sci-fi skin. I don't really care if i kill orcs or orks.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Chris
Potato del Grande
- 18,392
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They could make being a city guard fun. No schedule you have to keep though like a job, jesus christ. Like the gates are constantly under attack and you need to defend them, maybe some sort of looping event with good rewards for taking part. They could even have the town be taken over if nobody does it and it becomes a dungeon or liberation event. It'll just take some solid well thought out game design to make it work, but I don't belive that the big companies have much of that.
Merchants has been done in EVE and it's pretty great. Why has nobody made a fantasy game with EVE style crafting/looting (that is recent and isn't shit like runescape)?
Merchants has been done in EVE and it's pretty great. Why has nobody made a fantasy game with EVE style crafting/looting (that is recent and isn't shit like runescape)?
It always sounds neat in theory to have a completely player driven city, but who the fuck wants to bake pies day in and day out?
